THE ANGLER's grave. I. "Sorrow, sorrow, bring it green! True tears make the grass to grow And the grief of the good, I ween, Is grateful to him that sleeps below. Strew sweet flowers, free of blightBlossoms gathered in the dew: Should they wither before night, Flowers and blossoms bring anew. II. "Sorrow, sorrow, speed away, To our angler's quiet mound, With the old pilgrim, twilight grey, Enter thou on the holy ground; There he sleeps, whose heart was twined With wild stream and wandering burn, Wooer of the western wind! Watcher of the April morn! III. "Sorrow at the poor man's hearth! Haply thou shalt wave the wand, Mr Stoddart-like all the rest of our young poets-must needs try his hand, too, at the sonnet-and here are five-which, bating his departure from the legitimate verse, are excellentfinely felt, and on the whole felicitously composed. SONNET. "Through Luichart's lone expanse, dark Conan flows, Of moorland nature, as its tawny blood The quiet lake; at length, this soft repose— Reft of the life; yet, picture-like, to me SONNET. The fellow-anglers of my youthful days, (Of past realities we form our dream), I watch them re-assembling by the stream, And on the group with solemn musings gaze; "Of all sweet waters and soul-stirring spots, Remote from the contentions of mankind, Oftest repictured by my musing thoughts, Lies a bright lake among fair trees enshrined, Yelept Loch Achilty. A heath-grown crest Surnamed the Tor its eastern guardian seems, While wild Craig Darroch rears its hill of dreams Emprisoning the clear wave on the west. Bright mimic bays with weeping birches fringed An islet ruin-solitary deer— SONNET. "A meteor-bearing bark before me made For Tweed's wide current from a wooded bay, And under midnight's cover, on its way Dipped flagging, like the heron's wingpursued At every touch by fiery snakes, that play'd Around the vessel's track. A figure stood Upon the prow with tall and threat'ning spear, Which suddenly into the stream he smote. Methought of Charon and his gloomy boat Of the torch'd Furies and of Pluto drear Burning the Stygian tide for lamprey vile, That on his bride's dimm'd face, Hell might behold a smile." SONNET. "To the monastic mind thy quiet shade Kindly accords, bewild'ring Darnaway! Here, those retiring Powers, whose her mit sway The hordes of gross emotions hold obey'd Reign indolent, on bank or flowr'y glade. A deep unusual murmur meets my ear, As if the oak's Briarean arms were sway'd Far off in the weird wind. Like timorous deer Caught as he browses by the hunter's horn, I stop perplex'd, half dreading the career Of coming whirlwind. Then with conquer'd fear Advancing softly through a screen of thorn, From edge of horrid rock, abruptly bold, Rushing through conduit vast, swart Findhorn I behold." CHRISTOPHER IN HIS CAVE that was among the mountains-the magnificent mountains of our Highlands; CHRISTOPHER IN HIS ALCOVE-this is amid the Fields-the beautiful fields of our Lowlands-within the policy of Buchanan Lodge-in the distance "stately Edinburgh throned on Crags," "In soft aerial perspective displayed; ' nor is it easy, in the gloaming hour, to distinguish the city from the clouds. Here have we been a lifetime-like day-and shall another sun rise on the Ephemeral! The Neophyte has evanished-and can it be that he was with us but in the spirit? Have we been communing all the while with a creation of our own fancy and our own heart? Yet the voice was familiar to our ear, and had its own tones appropriate to the character of the visitant of our waking dreams. May we say, in all humility, that we have not "lost a day?" Our wordless thoughts were innumerable-and not one of all the multitude without its own feeling that made it un wordable; how few-in comparisonthose that might have been recorded. Of them, alas! some slipped away like sand-some melted like dew-dropssome danced off like sunbeams-some stalked by like shadows. Yet may we say, in all humility, that we have not " lost a day." "O, mortal man, that livest here by toil,"-we join with thee in a Hymn written for us by Wordsworth. THE LABOURER'S NOON-DAY HYMN. Up to the throne of God is borne The voice of praise at early morn, And he accepts the punctual hymn Sung as the light of day grows dim. Nor will he turn his ear aside Blest are the moments, doubly blest, That, drawn from this one hour of rest, Are with a ready heart bestow'd Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work. BARD of THE FLEECE, whose skilful genius made Nor hallowed less with musical delight Than those soft scenes through which thy childhood strayed, With green hills fenced, with ocean's murmur lulled ;' For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still, Gray, somewhere in his letters, places Dyer at the head of the poets of his day; and though the list enumerated contains no name above mediocrity, declares him to be a man of genius. Akenside, who Dr Johnson allows," on a poetical question, had a right to be heard," said, "that he would regulate his opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer's Fleece; for if that were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence." The pleasant sonnet you have now read expresses the sentiments of Wordsworth. "In 1757," quoth Dr Johnson, "Dyer published The Fleece, his chief poetical work; of which I will not suppress a ludicrous story. Dodsley, VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXXXIII, the bookseller, was one day mentioning it to a critical visitor, with more expectation of success than the other could easily admit. In the conversation the author's age was asked; and being reported as advanced in life, 'He will,' said the critic, 'be buried in woollen."" "This witticism," saith Thomas Campbell, "has probably been oftener repeated than any passage in the poem." Many a wretched witticism has had wide currency-and this is the most wretched of the wretched-the little meaning it had at the time having been, somehow or other, we believe, dependent on the repeal of a tax affecting graveclothes. The "critical visitor," like most of his tribe-must have been an ignorant fellow-for Grongar Hill had 20 been popular for thirty and The Ruins of Rome well known for twenty years. "Of The Fleece," saith Samuel, "which never became popular, and is now universally neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention. The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together, is to couple the serpent with the fowl. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity, by interposing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer's art of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which blank verse, incumbering and incumbered, superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to be pleased." True that the poem has fallen into oblivion, and, we fear, by its own weight, for it is heavy, and frequently liable to some of the objections here urged; but it is worthy of revival. As to the miserable stuff about "the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture," it would be shameful even to seek to refute it. A powerful and original genius has done that by blows on an anvil, heard far up Parnassus-aye, Ebenezer Elliot has illuminated the town of Sheffield with a light that will outlive the blazing of all her forges. Grongar Hill is a very pleasing effusion, and we have half a mind to recite some remembered passagesthough you might, perhaps, be tempted to cry "pshaw !" We once heard a poet say that the opening of the Plea. sures of Hope was borrowed-we fear he said stolen from it. That is not true-begging his pardon. Dyer writes: "See on the mountain's northern side, Which to those who journey near, The images here are natural and impressive, but the expression is poor, with the exception of "As yon summits soft and fair, Clad in colours of the air;" and the contrast between the present and the future is feebly and obscurely set forth. How serenely beautiful the opening of Campbell's immortal poem : "At summer eve, when heaven's aërial bow Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, Whose sunlit summit mingles with the sky? Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear More sweet than all the landscape smiling near? 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the scene, More pleasing seems than all the past has been, And every form that fancy can repair, From dark oblivion glows divinely there." Let poets be just to one another; but alas! we fear it is among the greatest that jealousy or some unanalysable feeling towards their living compeers has ever prevailed. Yes we shall recite a bit of Grongar: Now I gain the mountain's brow, Does the face of nature show, In all the lines of heaven's bow: And, swelling to embrace the light, "Old castles on the cliffs arise, Proudly towering in the skies ! And beyond the purple grove, On which a dark hill, steep and high, 'Tis now the raven's bleak abode ; The Country Walk is almost Grongar Hill over again, with variations--but it has some pictures more touching to the heart. It opens gladsomely "I am resolved this charming day, And have no roof above my head, "Before the yellow barn I see Of strutting cocks, advancing stout, Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood, And turkeys gabbling for their food, While rustics thresh the wealthy floor, And tempt them all to crowd the door." As he saunters through the fields, "Here finding pleasure after pain, Sleeping I see a wearied swain, While his full scrip lies open by That does his healthy food supply." We wonder what has wearied the swain-the hour appears to be antemeridian-and were we to find any swain on our farm asleep, with a full scrip lying open by, we should infallibly fling it over the hedge, and rouse him from his dream of " Dorothy Draggle-Tail," with an antidote to the rod of Morpheus. By and by the poet seeks the shade, and seems disposed to imitate the swain : "A little onward and I go Into the shade that groves bestow; And on green moss I lay me down, That o'er the root of oak has grown. There all is silent, but some flood That sweetly murmurs in the wood; And birds that warble in the sprays, And charm even silence with their lays." We are easily pleased-but we call that pretty poetry and so does Wordsworth. John Dyer does not fall asleep-but, on the contrary, addresses silence with much animation. "Oh powerful silence! how you reign In the poet's busy brain! His numerous thoughts obey the calls Like moles, whene'er the coast is clear, We love thee, "excellent and amiable Dyer". -as thou art rightly called in a note to The Excursion-for this picture : "I rouse me up, and on I rove, 'Tis more than time to leave the grove, Whose willow walls and furzy brow, Through spreading beds of blooming green, And makes them ever green and young. |